inquisitors of the edict of 2nd January, in which they set forth that
inasmuch as it had come to their knowledge that many persons had
departed out of Seville in fear of prosecution upon grounds of
heretical pravity, they commanded the nobles of the Kingdom of Castile
that within fifteen days they should make an exact return of the
persons of both sexes who had sought refuge in their lordships or
jurisdictions; that they arrest all these and lodge them in the prison
of the Inquisition in Seville, confiscating their property, and holding
it at the disposal of the inquisitors; that none should shelter any
fugitive under pain of greater excommunication and of other penalties
by law established against abettors of heretics.
The harsh injustice that lay in this call to arrest men and women
merely because they had departed from Seville before departure was in
any way forbidden, revealed the severity with which the inquisitors
intended to proceed. It completed the consternation of the
New-Christians who had remained behind, and how numerous these were may
be gathered from the fact that in the district of Seville alone they
numbered a hundred thousand, many of them occupying, thanks to the
industry and talent characteristic of their race, positions of great
eminence. It even disquieted the well-favoured young Don Rodrigo de
Cardona, who in all his vain, empty, pampered and rather vicious life
had never yet known perturbation. Not that he was a New-Christian. He
was of a lineage that went back to the Visigoths, of purest red
Castilian blood, untainted by any strain of that dark-hued, unclean
fluid alleged to flow in Hebrew veins. But it happened that he was in
love with the daughter of the millionaire Diego de Susan, a girl whose
beauty was so extraordinary that she was known throughout Seville and
for many a mile around as la Hermosa Fembra; and he knew that such
commerce—licit or illicitly conducted—was disapproved by the holy
fathers. His relations with the girl had been perforce clandestine,
because the disapproval of the holy fathers was matched in thoroughness
by that of Diego de Susan. It had been vexatious enough on that account
not to be able to boast himself the favoured of the beautiful and
opulent Isabella de Susan; it was exasperating to discover now a new
and more imperative reason for this odious secrecy.
Never sped a lover to his mistress in a frame of mind more aggrieved
than that which afflicted Don Rodrigo as, tight-wrapped in his black
cloak, he gained the Calle de Ataud on that January night.
Anon, however, when by way of a garden gate and an easily escaladed
balcony he found himself in the presence of Isabella, the delight of
her effaced all other considerations. Her father was from home, as she
had told him in the note that summoned him; he was away at Palacios on
some merchant’s errand, and would not return until the morrow. The
servants were all abed, and so Don Rodrigo might put off his cloak and
hat, and lounge at his ease upon the low Moorish divan, what time she
waited upon him with a Saracen goblet filled with sweet wine of Malaga.
The room in which she received him was one set apart for her own use,
her bower, a long, low ceilinged chamber, furnished with luxury and
taste. The walls were hung with tapestries, the floor spread with
costly Eastern rugs; on an inlaid Moorish table a tall, three-beaked
lamp of beaten copper charged with aromatic oil shed light and perfume
through the apartment.
Don Rodrigo sipped his wine, and his dark, hungry eyes followed her as
she moved about him with vaguely voluptuous, almost feline grace. The
wine, the heavy perfume of the lamp, and the beauty of her played havoc
among them with his senses, so that he forgot for the moment his
Castilian lineage and clean Christian blood, forgot that she derived
from the accursed race of the Crucifiers. All that he remembered was
that she was the loveliest woman in Seville, daughter to the wealthiest
man, and in that hour of weakness he decided to convert into reality
that which had hitherto been no more than an infamous presence. He
would loyally fulfil the false, disloyal promises he had made. He would
take her to wife. It was a sacrifice which her beauty and her wealth
should make worth while. Upon that impulse he spoke now, abruptly:
“Isabella, when will you marry me?”
She stood before him, looking down into his weak, handsome face, her
fingers interlacing his own. She merely smiled. The question did not
greatly move her. Not knowing him for the scoundrel that he was,
guessing nothing of the present perturbation of his senses, she found
it very natural that he should ask her to appoint the day.
“It is a question you must ask my father,” she answered him.
“I will,” said he, “to-morrow, on his return.” And he drew her down
beside him.
But that father was nearer than either of them dreamed. At that very
moment the soft thud of the closing housedoor sounded through the
house. It brought her sharply to her feet, and loose from his coiling
arms, with quickened breath and blanching face. A moment she hung
there, tense, then sped to the door of the room, set it ajar and
listened.
Up the stairs came the sound of footsteps and of muttering voices. It
was her father, and others with him.
With ever-mounting fear she turned to Don Rodrigo, and breathed the
question: “If they should come here?”
The Castilian stood where he had risen by the divan, his face paler now
than its pale, aristocratic wont, his eyes reflecting the fear that
glittered in her own. He had no delusion as to what action Diego de
Susan would take upon discovering him. These Jewish dogs were quickly
stirred to passion, and as jealous as their betters of the honour of
their womenfolk. Already Don Rodrigo in imagination saw his clean red
Christian blood bespattering that Hebrew floor, for he had no weapon
save the heavy Toledo dagger at his girdle, and Diego de Susan was not
alone.
It was, he felt, a ridiculous position for a Hidalgo of Spain. But his
dignity was to suffer still greater damage. In another moment she had
bundled him into an alcove behind the arras at the chamber’s end, a
tiny closet that was no better than a cupboard contrived for the
storing of household linen. She had-moved with a swift precision which
at another time might have provoked his admiration, snatching up his
cloak and hat, and other evidences of his presence, quenching the lamp,
and dragging him to that place of cramped concealment, which she
remained to share with him.
Came presently movements in the room beyond, and the voice of her
father:
“We shall be securest from intrusion here. It is my daughter’s room. If
you will give me leave, I will go down again to admit our other
friends.”
Those other friends, as Don Rodrigo gathered, continued to arrive for
the next half-hour, until in the end there must have been some twenty
of them assembled in that chamber. The mutter of voices had steadily
increased, but so confused that no more than odd words, affording no
clue to the reason of this gathering, had reached the hidden couple.
And then quite suddenly a silence fell, and on that silence beat the
sharp, clear voice of Diego de Susan addressing them.
“My friends,” he said, “I have called you hither that we may concert
measures for the protection of ourselves and all New-Christians in
Seville from the fresh peril by which we are menaced. The edict of the
inquisitors reveals how much we have to fear. You may gather from it
that the court of the Holy Office is hardly likely to deal in justice,
and that the most innocent may find himself at any moment exposed to
its cruel mercies. Therefore it is for us now to consider how to
protect ourselves and our property from the unscrupulous activities of
this tribunal. You are the principal New Christian citizens of Seville;
you are wealthy, not only in property, but also in the goodwill of the
people, who trust and respect, and at need will follow, you. If nothing
less will serve, we must have recourse to arms; and so that we are
resolute and united, my friends, we shall prevail against the
inquisitors.”
Within the alcove, Don Rodrigo felt his skin roughening with horror at
this speech, which breathed sedition not only against the Sovereigns,
but against the very Church. And with his horror was blent a certain
increase of fear. If his situation had been perilous before, it was
tenfold more dangerous now. Discovery, since he had overheard this
treason, must mean his certain death. And Isabella, realizing the same
to the exclusion of all else, clutched his arm and cowered against him
in the dark.
There was worse to follow. Susan’s address was received with a murmur
of applause, and then others spoke, and several were named, and their
presence thus disclosed. There was the influential Manuel Sauli, who
next to Susan was the wealthiest man in Seville; there was Torralba,
the Governor of Triana; Juan Abolafio, the farmer of the royal customs,
and his brother Fernandez, the licentiate, and there were others—all of
them men of substance, some even holding office under the Crown. Not
one was there who dissented from anything that Susan had said; rather
did each contribute some spur to the general resolve. In the end it was
concerted that each of those present should engage himself to raise a
proportion of the men, arms and money that would be needed for their
enterprise. And upon that the meeting was dissolved, and they departed.
Susan himself went with them. He had work to do in the common cause, he
announced, and he would do it that very night in which it was supposed
that he was absent at Palacios.
At last, when all had gone, and the house was still again, Isabella and
her lover crept forth from their concealment, and in the light of the
lamp which Susan had left burning each looked into the other’s white,
startled face. So shaken was Don Rodrigo with horror of what he had
overheard, and with the terror of discovery, that it was with
difficulty he kept his teeth from chattering.
“Heaven protect us!” he gasped. “What Judaizing was this?”
“Judaizing!” she echoed. It was the term applied to apostacy, to the
relapse of New-Christians to Judaism, an offense to be expiated at the
stake. “Here was no Judaizing. Are you mad, Rodrigo? You heard no
single word that sinned against the Faith.”
“Did I not? I heard treason enough to.”
“No, nor treason either. You heard honourable, upright men considering
measures of defence against oppression, injustice, and evil
acquisitiveness masquerading in the holy garments of religion.”
He stared askance at her for a moment, then his full lips curled into a
sneer. “Of course you would seek to justify them,” he said. “You are of
that foul brood yourself. But you cannot think to cozen me, who am of
clean Old-christian blood and a true son of Mother Church. These men
plot evil against the Holy Inquisition. Is that not Judaizing when it
is done by Jews?”
She was white to the lips, and a new horror stared at him from her
great dark eyes; her lovely bosom rose and fell in tumult. Yet still
she sought to reason with him.
“They are not Jews—not one of them. Why, Perez is himself in holy
orders. All of them are Christians, and...”
“Newly-baptized!” he broke in, sneering viciously. “A defilement of
that holy sacrament to gain them worldly advantages. That is revealed
by what passed here just now. Jews they were born, the sons of Jews,
and Jews they remain under their cloak of mock Christianity, to be
damned as Jews in the end.” He was panting now with fiery indignation;
a holy zeal inflamed this profligate defiler. “God forgive me that ever
I entered here. Yet I do believe that it was His will that I should
come to overhear what is being plotted. Let me depart from hence.”
With a passionate gesture of abhorrence he swung towards the door. Her
clutch upon his arm arrested him.
“Whither do you go?” she asked him sharply. He looked now into her
eyes, and of all that they contained he saw only fear; he saw nothing
of the hatred into which her love had been transmuted in that moment by
his unsparing insults to herself, her race and her home, by the purpose
which she clearly read in him.
“Whither?” he echoed, and sought to shake her off.
“Whither my Christian duty bids me.”
It was enough for her. Before he could prevent or suspect her purpose,
she had snatched the heavy Toledo blade from his girdle, and armed with
it stood between the door and him.
“A moment, Don Rodrigo. Do not attempt to advance, or, as Heaven
watches us, I strike, and it maybe that I shall kill you. We must talk
awhile before you go.”
Amazed, chapfallen, half-palsied, he stood before her, his fine
religious zeal wiped out by fear of that knife in her weak woman’s
hand. Rapidly to-night was she coming into real knowledge of this
Castilian gentleman, whom with pride she had taken for her lover. It
was a knowledge that was to sear her presently with self-loathing and
self-contempt. But for the moment her only consideration was that, as a
direct result of her own wantonness, her father stood in mortal peril.
If he should perish through the deletion of this creature, she would
account herself his slayer.
“You have not considered that the deletion you intend will destroy my
father,” she said quietly.
“There is my Christian duty to consider,” answered he, but without
boldness now.
“Perhaps. But there is something you must set against it. Have you no
duty as a lover—no duty to me?”
“No earthly duty can weigh against a spiritual obligation....”
“Ah, wait! Have patience. You have not well considered, that is plain.
In coming here in secret you wronged my father. You will not trouble to
deny it.
“Jointly we wronged him, you and I. Will you then take advantage of
something learnt whilst you were hiding there like a thief from the
consequences of what you did, and so do him yet this further wrong?”
“Must I wrong my conscience?” he asked her sullenly.
“Indeed, I fear you must.”
“Imperil my immortal soul?” He almost laughed.
“You talk in vain.”
“But I have something more than words for you.” With her left hand she
drew upon the fine gold chain about her neck, and brought forth a tiny
jewelled cross. Passing the chain over her head, she held it out.
“Take this,” she bade him. “Take it, I say. Now, with that sacred
symbol in your hand, make solemn oath to divulge no word of what you
have learnt here tonight, or else resign yourself to an unshriven
death. For either you take that oath, or I rouse the servants and have
you dealt with as one who has intruded here unbidden for an evil end.”
She backed away from him as she spoke, and threw wide the door. Then,
confronting him from the threshold, she admonished him again, her voice
no louder than a whisper. “Quick now! Resolve yourself. Will you die
here with all your sins upon you, and so destroy for all eternity the
immortal soul that urges you to this betrayal, or will you take the
oath that I require?”
He began an argument that was like a sermon of the Faith. But she cut
him short. “For the last time!” she bade him. “Will you decide?”
He chose the coward’s part, of course, and did violence tomb fine
conscience. With the cross in his hand he repeated after her the words
of the formidable oath that she administered, an oath which it must
damn his immortal soul to break. Because of that, because she imagined
that she had taken the measure of his faith, she returned him his
dagger, and let him go at last. She imagined that she had bound him
fast in irrefragable spiritual bonds.
And even on the morrow, when her father and all those who had been
present at that meeting at Susan’s house were arrested by order of the
Holy Office of the Inquisition, she still clung to that belief. Yet
presently a doubt crept in, a doubt that she must at all costs resolve.
And so presently she called for her litter, and had herself carried to
the Convent of St. Paul, where she asked to see Frey Alonso de Ojeda,
the Prior of the Dominicans of Seville.
She was left to wait in a square, cheerless, dimly-lighted room
pervaded by a musty smell, that had for only furniture a couple of
chairs and a praying-stool, and for only ornament a great, gaunt
crucifix hanging upon one of its whitewashed walls.
Thither came presently two Dominican friars. One of these was a
harsh-featured man of middle height and square build, the
uncompromising zealot Ojeda. The other was tall and lean, stooping
slightly at the shoulders, haggard and pale of countenance, with
deep-set, luminous dark eyes, and a tender, wistful mouth. This was the
Queen’s confessor, Frey Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of
Castile. He approached her, leaving Ojeda in the background, and stood
a moment regarding her with eyes of infinite kindliness and compassion.
“You are the daughter of that misguided man, Diego de Susan,” he said,
in a gentle voice. “God help and strengthen you, my child, against the
trials that may be in store for you. What do you seek at our poor
hands? Speak, child, without fear.”
“Father,” she faltered, “I come to implore your pity.”
“No need to implore it, child. Should I withhold pity who stand myself
in need of pity, being a sinner—as are we all.”
“It is for my father that I come to beg your mercy.”
“So I supposed.” A shade crossed the gentle, wistful face; the tender
melancholy deepened in the eyes that regarded her. “If your father is
innocent of what has been alleged against him, the benign tribunal of
the Holy Office will bring his innocence to light, and rejoice therein;
if he is guilty, if he has strayed—as we may all stray unless fortified
by heavenly grace—he shall be given the means of expiation, that his
salvation may be assured him.”
She shivered at the words. She knew the mercy in which the inquisitors
dealt, a mercy so spiritual that it took no account of the temporal
agonies inflicted to ensure it.
“My father is innocent of any sin against the Faith,” said she.
“Are you so sure?” croaked the harsh voice of Ojeda, breaking in.
“Consider well. Remember that your duty as a Christian is above your
duty as a daughter.”
Almost had she bluntly demanded the name of her father’s accuser, that
thus she might reach the object of her visit. Betimes she checked the
rash impulse, perceiving that subtlety was here required; that a direct
question would close the door to all information. Skilfully, then, she
chose her line of attack.
“I am sure,” she exclaimed, “that he is a more fervent and pious
Christian—New-Christian though he be—than his accuser.”
The wistfulness faded from Torquemada’s eyes. They grew keen, as became
the eyes of an inquisitor, the eyes of a sleuth, quick to fasten on a
spoor. But he shook his head.
Ojeda advanced. “That I cannot believe,” said he. “The deletion was
made from a sense of duty so pure that the delator did not hesitate to
confess the sin of his own commission through which he had discovered
the treachery of Don Diego and his associates.”
She could have cried out in anguish at this answer to her unspoken
question. Yet she controlled herself, and that no single doubt should
linger, she thrust boldly home.
“He confessed it?” she cried, seemingly aghast. The friar slowly
nodded. “Don Rodrigo confessed?” she insisted, as will the incredulous.
Abruptly the friar nodded again; and as abruptly checked, recollecting
himself.
“Don Rodrigo?” he echoed, and asked: “Who mentioned Don Rodrigo?”
But it was too late. His assenting nod had betrayed the truth, had
confirmed her worst fear. She swayed a little; the room swam round her,
she felt as she would swoon. Then blind indignation against that
forsworn betrayer surged to revive her. If it was through her weakness
and undutifulness that her father had been destroyed, through her
strength should he be avenged, though in doing so she pulled down and
destroyed herself.
“And he confessed to his own sin?” she was repeating slowly, ever on
that musing, incredulous note. “He dared confess himself a Judaizer?”
“A Judaizer!” Sheer horror now overspread the friar’s grim countenance.
“A Judaizer! Don Rodrigo? Oh, impossible!”
“But I thought you said he had confessed.”
“Why, yes, but... but not to that.” Her pale lips smiled, sadly
contemptuous.
“I see. He set limits of prudence upon his confession. He left out his
Judatting practices. He did not tell you, for instance, that this
deletion was an act of revenge against me who refused to marry him,
having discovered his unfaith, and fearing its consequences in this
world and the next.”
Ojeda stared at her in sheer, incredulous amazement.
And then Torquemada spoke: “Do you say that Don Rodrigo de Cardona is a
Judaizer? Oh, it is unbelievable.”
“Yet I could give you evidence that should convince you.”
“Then so you shall. It is your sacred duty, lest you become an abettor
of heresy, and yourself liable to the extreme penalty.”
It would be a half-hour later, perhaps, when she quitted the Convent of
St. Paul to return home, with Hell in her heart, knowing in life no
purpose but that of avenging the parent her folly had destroyed. As she
was being carried past the Alcazar, she espied across the open space a
tall, slim figure in black, in whom she recognized her lover, and
straightway she sent the page who paced beside her litter to call him
to her side. The summons surprised him after what had passed between
them; moreover, considering her father’s present condition, he was
reluctant to be seen in attendance upon the beautiful, wealthy Isabella
de Susan. Nevertheless, urged on by curiosity, he went.
Her greeting increased his surprise.
“I am in deep distress, Rodrigo, as you may judge,” she told him sadly.
“You will have heard what has befallen my father?”
He looked at her sharply, yet saw nothing but loveliness rendered more
appealing by sorrow. Clearly she did not suspect him of betrayal; did
not realize that an oath extorted by violence—and an oath, moreover, to
be false to a sacred duty—could not be accounted binding.
“I... I heard of it an hour ago,” he lied a thought unsteadily. “I... I
commiserate you deeply.”
“I deserve commiseration,” answered she, “and so does my poor father,
and those others. It is plain that amongst those he trusted there was a
traitor, a spy, who went straight from that meeting to inform against
them. If I but had a list it were easy to discover the betrayer. One
need but ascertain who is the one of all who were present whose arrest
has been omitted.” Her lovely sorrowful eyes turned full upon him.
“What is to become of me now, alone in the world?” she asked him. “My
father was my only friend.”
The subtle appeal of her did its work swiftly. Besides, he saw here a
noble opportunity worth surely some little risk.
“Your only friend?” he asked her thickly. “Was there no one else? Is
there no one else, Isabella?”
“There was,” she said, and sighed heavily. “But after what befell last
night, when... You know what is in my mind. I was distraught then, mad
with fear for this poor father of mine, so that I could not even
consider his sin in its full heinousness, nor see how righteous was
your intent to inform against him. Yet I am thankful that it was not by
your deletion that he was taken. The thought of that is to-day my only
consolation.”
They had reached her house by now. Don Rodrigo put forth his arm to
assist her to alight from her litter, and begged leave to accompany her
within. But she denied him.
“Not now—though I am grateful to you, Rodrigo. Soon, if you will come
and comfort me, you may. I will send you word when I am more able to
receive you—that is, if I am forgiven for...”
“Not another word,” he begged her. “I honour you for what you did. It
is I who should sue to you for forgiveness.”
“You are very noble and generous, Don Rodrigo. God keep you!” And so
she left him.